Chapter 12 · Death Eighteen

"Don't touch that."

My hand closed around Jude's wrist before his fingers reached the panel. Blood slicked my palm—his blood, still warm from the climb out of the shaft.

Behind the fractured glass, the reactor core pulsed green. The timer above it read seventy-two seconds.

"Lyra." Jude didn't pull away. "You know what happens if we don't."

"The station goes dark. Life support dies. Three hundred people suffocate in lockdown."

"And the blast resets us again."

I tightened my grip. "Seventeen resets. Eighteen deaths. You don't get to make that sound normal."

His eyes flicked to the core. "Then stop it."

Mara lay ten feet behind him, one hand pressed to her ribs, the other empty. The trigger she'd been holding was gone. She stared at her fingers like they belonged to somebody else.

"You said Drake rigged the reactor," I said. "Now you're telling me killing it ends the loop?"

"I'm telling you it ends the only part we can reach."

"That's not the same thing."

Jude braced one hand against the panel. Blood spread beneath his jacket. "Every time the charges go off, the core catches the surge.